The day my TA got involved.

Previously in Class 1

The  children/scientists had successfully released the Gruffalo baby back into the woods. Admittedly, there was some confusion over whether they had actually released an actual Gruffalo baby. Despite this, I consider the operation to be a success.

The idea of today's lesson

• To use my willing teaching assistant to act in full role, with me pausing her throughout to discuss what the children were seeing *
• To introduce a different viewpoint
• To allow the children to role play freely in order to explore an idea
• To attempt to use MoE techniques with a particular lesson objective in mind (namely, to learn about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores). While planning the lesson I used the Circle of Progression/ Teacher Compass **

Helping the Park Keeper

As the children came in from break my TA was standing in front of the board musing aloud over a chart showing a decline in the mouse population in the local woods (coincidentally, the same woods containing two gruffalos). ***  Out of role, I could support the children to discuss what they saw and who she was. I 'paused' her at times (she did a marvellous job of holding still) so that the children could absorb what was happening. They established that the mouse population was falling and the park keeper didn't know why.

After a while I suggested the children ask  her some questions. This did not go so well. I forgot to research/note down ways to support small children with their discussion and at times they got stuck. For example:

" My cat always brings mice in the house!"  (useful comment)
" So does mine!"   (supportive and therefore fairly useful)
"And mine!"         (beginning to see where this is going)
"Mine too!"          (I was right)
"Guess what! On Saturday I took my cat...."    (less and less useful)

After the excitement of shouting out about their various cats, I managed to say something helpful and we got back on track. On the whole the discussion was quite productive, but the other problem I had was of three particularly loud, confident and talkative children. They had good ideas and were highly invested in the fiction, but they just weren't letting anyone else talk. I did try to be subtle in my attempt to help others to join in. Eventually, though, I just had to ask them to be quiet and listen to others for a few moments. I will endeavour to develop the children's discussion skills (tricky when you're five or six, after all).

After the initial discussion the children went to the 'woods' (on a wet rainy day, not even our outdoor area: I was impressed by the children's use of chairs for trees and lights-off for night time in our classroom). I had decided to let them role play looking for other animals to research what might be eating the mice other than the gruffalos: the idea being that myself and the park keeper would help through discussion. This was fairly successful, though I did have to insist that the 'deer over there' was not eating a mouse and that the two children 'being foxes running away from the gruffalo' were actually researchers, not foxes. In hindsight, I probably could have used their foxiness more productively than just telling them they weren't foxes; a note for next time.

Following this, the park keeper left and our TA returned (impressively, the children didn't comment on this: they're getting better at accepting that the adults in their lives do at times become mayors/park keepers and so on). We then discussed what they had found in the woods, drawing out the intended learning about herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.
Finally, the children 'reported' back to the park keeper by drawing and labelling animals they had found under the correct headings. For a while I sat back while they got on with this and established that they were all (bar one) on task and invested in the fiction. However, once I peered at their work and saw such things as tigers (unlikely to be found in English woods) in the herbivore section (doubly incorrect), I decided I had better wander around talking to children about their learning. 

For next time:

• Research ways to support young children to have a 'no hands up' discussion where more than three of them are able to talk
• Learn more questions and other openers to guide discussions
• Possibly allow a little more freedom in the role play, but guide it (see small foxes, above)

Notes:* Possibly dramatic conventions no. 2 and 1

** An initially confusing but clearly useful way to move children from 'play' to 'purpose'. Here are some notes I made on the teacher compass:

*** Symbolic representation (possibly): this gave children clues to talk about and proved useful